CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, March 8, 2004

by William Hamilton, Ph.D.

"The Passion of the Christ"

Anyone who sees the “The Passion of the Christ” and thinks it is anti-anything or anti-anyone entirely misses the point of Christ’s messages to humankind. Indeed, the film’s critics are to be pitied because they still don’t get it. So, for those who think the film is anti-anything, let’s try one more time. Here are the messages you fail or refuse to understand: Love thy neighbor and forgive those who persecute you.

Given its druthers, the Hollywood Left would prefer that this film had never been made. Their hostility to “The Passion of Christ” reminds one of the joke about why the monument bearing The Ten Commandments had to be removed from that Alabama courthouse: Having commandments against lying, stealing and adultery in a building full of lawyers and politicians was creating a hostile work environment.

For sure, “The Passion of the Christ” creates a hostile environment for the cocaine-snorting, bed-hopping, do-whatever-feels-good folks of the Hollywood Left. Therefore, the response of the Hollywood Left to this film is easily predictable: If you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. In this case, the messenger is Mel Gibson, the man who produced the film and co-wrote the screenplay. Come next year’s Academy Awards, it will be interesting to see how Hollywood will refuse to recognize “The Passion of the Christ” for its great acting, stunning visual effects and moving musical score.

While any viewer with any kind of a faith in a God, not just the God of the Old and New Testaments, will see this film for the epic it surely is, those without faith will be made very uncomfortable by it. The atheists, the agnostics, the ACLU crowd do not want religion to exist, not only in government and politics, but anywhere in our culture. The fact that some of us are believers creates a nagging doubt in their secular minds that we may know something they do not know. In short, they may be on the wrong side of history, both world and personal. That bothers them.

The secularists, and particularly those on the Hollywood Left, like to think they can always figure out where others are coming from. Specifically, they believe all humans are governed by only two emotions: fear and greed. Hollywood movie negotiations and deals are conducted and made on those foundations.

Consequently, they do not know how to deal with people who are motivated by something other than fear and greed. They are mystified by those who believe and practice the basic tenets of the world’s great and enduring religions. This says more about them than it does the community of believers who respond to and act according to such breathtaking and revolutionary ideas such as: Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. The Hollywood Left operates on the basis of: Do it unto others before they do it unto you.

This is a major reason the major media and the Hollywood Left are so confounded by President George W. Bush. He marches to a Drummer whom they know not. That makes Dubyah very puzzling to the Hollywood Left and the left-leaning media.

Bottom line: “The Passion of the Christ” is so powerful and so moving that it creates within the movie-goer an enormous desire to learn more about Christ’s ministry and teachings. Overtime, the great value of “The Passion of the Christ” will the creation of a large audience thirsting to learn more about the life and times of a simple carpenter who came to save the world from its sins.

William Hamilton, a nationally syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – novels about terrorist attacks on Colorado’s water supply and on the Panama Canal, respectively.